Are bidet ads too much to bare?

December 9, 2007|By Stephanie Horvath Staff Writer

Wellington — It's hard to miss the advertisement, with its four women's bare bottoms, each of them sporting a white smiley face. It's hanging right there, in the International Arena of the 124th National Horse Show & Family Festival.

"Clean is happy" it says underneath.

It's a head-scratcher. What are they selling?

Spectators guessed moist towelettes, colonoscopies and firming cream.

The real answer: fancy bidets.

"I thought it was very strange to have it at the horse show," said Brooke Watridge, an amateur rider. In her 10 years at the National, she said, she's never seen anything quite like it.

And no wonder. Horse jumping is the sport of kings, queens and people so rich they seem like royalty. And the National, the Super Bowl of the equestrian year, is a competition steeped in 124 years of that high-class horse history. Rolex is a major sponsor. Tiffany & Co. engraved the silver trophies. Guests can purchase everything from diamond jewelry to designer clothes to a jet timeshare right on site. So it's understandable that bidets and bare bottoms seem a little out of place.

The National's organizers worried about that. The horse show is a nonprofit and it's hard to find enough sponsors, so turning one away is tough.

"We all hemmed and hawed," said Mason Phelps, the National Horse Show chairman. "In the interest of fair play and the finances of the National Horse Show, we decided to let them come."

So Toto, a large Japanese plumbing company, paid about $3,500 to sponsor the horse show. Staffers pinned up some ads around the showgrounds and set up a tent near the entrance, right next to the tent for Costco. They've got a working bidet inside. The bathroom fixture, which isn't popular in the United States, originated in Europe and replaces toilet paper with a spritz of water.

It's not the first time Toto's "Clean is happy" ad has raised eyebrows. The company's been trying to convert Americans to the bidet culture and this summer it wanted to put the bare women's derrieres up on a large billboard on a building on Broadway in New York. But according to a New York Times article, Toto covered the bottoms with a white bar after a church inside that building protested.

But so far, Phelps said, no one's complained at the National.

"There's been some amusing wisecracks about it," he said.

Daisek Endo, who works in Toto's branding department, said he spotted the National Horse Show online and thought it would make the perfect bidet venue. After all, the rich are usually the first to adopt expensive, new technology.

The clip-on model that attaches to an existing toilet is $400, and the toilet-and-bidet combo is up to $5,000. But it seems bidets and horses don't mix, despite the fact that "bidet" means "pony" in old French. As of Saturday afternoon, Toto had received little interest from the horse show crowds.

"It's so slow," Endo said Friday. "I'm concerned."

Stephanie Horvath can be reached at smhorvath@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6643.